Money is downfall of hollywood?

ok, after looking through lots and lots of info on imdb.com i have come to a conclusion. the more moey spent on films the worse they are. this is not true for every film but most. i mean if a film is a success (e.g screm, american pie) the movie companies want to churn out another one so give the production crew more moeny this usually ends up making the film suck.

for example the films which have been a success that have spawned sequels which have not ben better than the original but cost more

scream 2 and 3 . scream cost $15 million to make and was the best. the sequels cost both $24 and $40 million and sucked ass!

American Pie 2. was good in its day so they made another whihc cost $30 million and was worse than the first. why do they do this. just give them the same amount of money as the last film or a just a little bit more. this money could have gone on better films

Usual Suspects cost $6million!!!!
Reservoir dogs cost $1.2million
Pulp Fiction - $8 million!
Duel - $450,000

sure some films deserve more money but only if the director can prove himself. why give a one time director almost double hi slast because he made one successful movie?

what are your thoughts on this?

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Please, man, look before your post. This is, I think, the third thread of yours this morning alone that I'd have to either move or merge with an existing thread.

Anyhoo, nice topic. I'll weigh in:

I don't think the philosophy holds at all. For every Pulp Fiction, there are literally hundreds of crappy Indy flicks that never see the light of day. I don't think it's at all true that, in general, the more money spent on a film, the worse it is. Jurassic Park was expensive to make. So was LOTR: FOTR. Both are undeniably brilliant films.

As for the studios giving directors more money: they do it because it works! The business on the whole is raking in tons of cash (this year is setting records), so their little system is working for the most part.

BTW: I thought all three Scream films were quite good.

soz about the posting in wrong threads. anyhoo

like i said some films deserve to have more money put into their sequels Jurrasic Park 2 being one of them. Its Speilberg for christs sake of course he can have all the money he wants but jurassic park 3 had the biggest budget and it was the worst of the lot. the special effects were worse than the first!

but sequels should be kept at the same budget as the first in MOST cases

Any in particular? Speed 2 should have had a budget of $0

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Money usually gets spent on what's proven popular. It's called a safe investment.

Sequels tend to get more money based on initial performance, I figure. It's business. Proven formula + bigger investment = bigger returns. Doesn't always work, but usually.

If your tastes run opposite to popular formulas, then it probably is annoying. I think although the strategy is financially effective, that doesn't mean it eats into other creative efforts so much. You don't have to have a false dichotomy between originality/experimentation and formula. There's always plenty of opportunity for both. The audience/consumer has the final say.

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I think Scream 2 is better than the first movie.





It managed to evolve really well and it's much more darker and deeper than the first movie. Scream 3 and 4, though, didn't pan out so well, in my opinion.

Lord Of the Rings and Nolan's Batman trilogy is an exception

I tink a big part of a rising budget for a sequel is that the paychecks for Actor's and Director, staff go up.

Look at Friends the TV series, they all earned very little for the first series and as the success grew they start getting $1million per episode.

The fact is that when movies are very expensive they tend to be dumbed down in order to please the largest number of demographic groups.

Avatar is one of the most obvious examples, since the movie cost 250 million dollars plus 300 million dollars in promotion, James Cameron had to dumb down the plot in order to lower the risks of the film flopping since a flop of such monstrous project would prove a disaster to the studio.

Overall, the best movies tend to have modest budgets since most movies tend to have modest budgets and so, by statistical property, most great movies tend to have modest budgets.

Anyway, with a modest 25 million dollars budget you can make a great movie with first rate special effects, such as There Will be Blood (budget 25 million) or Sunshine:



It was made with a budget of 20 million pounds, or about 30 million plus dollars and has first rate special effects.

While Pulp Fiction cost 8 million dollars because that was the standard budget of an American movie made in 1994.

For the ultimate example of a big budget film that is a masterpiece look at Seven Samurai (it was the most expensive film ever made in Japan up to that point, costing incredible 500 thousand dollars!). It was big budget for the place and time it was made.

The way I see it the studios make a ton of money on sequels, remakes and popcorn movies that are light and fun but very few end up loving.
And can then keep making movies and the more they make the more they can allow to smaller and more daring films which probably many of us here enjoy more than the big blockbusters that actually keeps the studios alive.

If Avatar had tanked that studio could've been in huge trouble so it's only natural that they dumb it down a little bit. Can't say that I like it but I can understand it.

Money is the downfall of everything

That it truly is.